


'till it was near morning

by wemighthavebeenqueens



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Concern for One Another, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Kiss, Hair Braiding, Implied Sexual Content, Medical Procedures, Pining, Post-Carnivale, Sickfic, Sleeping Together, Slight Implied Gore, Tenderness and Love, healing each other, i'm running out of ideas for tags but it's all tenderness and lamplight from here on out lads, not Really but if you want to see it that way all the more power to you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 07:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20485208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wemighthavebeenqueens/pseuds/wemighthavebeenqueens
Summary: Not like this, not like this, Harry Goodsir’s mind burns. For months now, he has been quietly fond of the Lady Silence. But as she stumbles and sways like a broken top, smelling of blood and ice and acrid smoke, he is suddenly, acutely aware of the fact that he loves her.





	'till it was near morning

**Author's Note:**

> I initially wrote this in my notebook, sitting on the roof, overlooking the ocean, and I am now finishing it with the company of a cool night breeze and the friendly presence of my roommates in my apartment living room. The concept came to me very suddenly after watching Episode 6 (A Mercy) for the second time with two of my closest friends, and it was absolutely a great joy to write. I promise I did my best when it comes to historical accuracy, but I also just wanted to put this out here before I completely gave up on trying to write!  
I'm a little nervous about sharing it, but I truly hope you enjoy.

Not like this, not like this, Harry Goodsir’s mind burns. For months now, he has been quietly fond of the Lady Silence. But as she stumbles and sways like a broken top, smelling of blood and ice and acrid smoke, he is suddenly, acutely aware of the fact that he loves her.

He lunges forward to catch her, feeling a sharp spike of deep emotion- panic, and something else- surge its way through the hollow of his chest. He holds her like a lifeline. Her furs are slick with matted blood and snow but she’s birdlike and fragile and light in his arms. She presses her hot forehead against his neck, then stares at him all glassy. Goodsir feels the panic on his tongue. Not you, I can’t lose you- and then there is the fire, and the terror, and the numbing grief that comes after.

He cannot afford to stop moving, not now. If he stops, he will have to think, and if he thinks- about Carnivale, about anything, about-well-he can’t. He keeps his breaths quick and shallow and his feet moving, back and forth and back. There are too many injured, and only he is left. He grips his wrist to stop his hand from shaking as he wraps the last of his clean gauze around Harry Peglar’s palm. He looks up to see silent, shocked tears making rivers across his patient’s cheeks, and-

Bridgens grips his shoulder. “Rest, doctor. This I can manage.” Goodsir is shaking all over by now. He allows himself to be led away as he watches Bridgens crouch and take Peglar’s face between his hands with heartbreaking tenderness.

He wakes from a black and troubled sleep some moments later, his body wedged against the wall of his bunk. Silna, his mind rings, and he’s consumed with the thought that he must care for her- she whom had pressed his hand ever so gently weeks ago and whispered her name to him like a gift. She who lays upon the cold and empty bed of Doctor Stanley now, her lips cracked and throat bloody. When they’d brought her semi-conscious to the ship, he’d done naught much more than lay her down and wipe the blood from her cheeks before running to attend to some of the burned men. He had to go to her now, damn sleep, damn it all.

Charles Des Voeux, face still darkened with soot, sits outside of her room, half awake and dumb with shock. No doubt he felt need to take watch, as he was accustomed to do with this strange woman. But upon seeing Goodsir picking his way down the hall with cheeks aflame and hollow, he stands with a sigh and opens the door.  
“I’ll be all right now,” Goodsir whispers, receiving only a nod from Des Voeux. The smaller man takes his leave without a word.

Harry pushes open the slatted door with fear melting against his ribs. Were that he had God with him. This room is full of ghosts and a woman whom he loves- yes, it is love, isn’t it? – so hard it hurts him.

She’s laid across the covers, fully unconscious now, with dried blood still clinging to her cheeks and braids and matted through her caribou coat. Yet her face is softened by sleep, her eyelashes dark against her smooth cheekbones, her lips ever so slightly parted. Harry feels tears at the corners of his eyes just from the sight of her. She can’t die on him. It hurts even to think the words.

He brushes personal feelings aside, tries to view her prone form as professionally as a doctor would. Her pulse is light but otherwise normal. Her chest rises and falls imperceptibly, and he struggles to listen to her lungs through her thick coat. Murmuring a silent apology, he pulls gently at the neck of her coat to expose the slightest hint of bare skin that he can press his ear to. Her lungs rattle slightly, perhaps from the cold, but she breathes easily. He won’t worry for now.

Her temperature is a little high. Her nose and eyes are clear. Though her hair is still wet from the frost, she currently has no sign of frostbite. He opens her mouth to the same that sight that shocked him so much before- blood still streaking her teeth, a little pooled in her lower jaw, her tongue cut clean out. He fears he may have to stitch the open cut she’s left him, if it continues to bleed.

For now, though, he takes a clean handkerchief and swabs out the inside of her mouth as gently as he can manage. He fetches water and cleans her cheeks, scrubs at the front of her coat. He rubs her cold and bare hands, dried over with the skin of her blood and possibly bitten by the frost. He tucks a wool blanket around her and lights a small brazier to warm her and dry her hair, then wraps himself in his pilot coat and lays upon the floor, half tucked under the desk, to sleep till she wakes. The burning smell of the weak little fire takes his mind back several hours and brings the panic back again, but it brings her some warmth, and with that spare comfort he falls into an uneasy sleep.

She wakes some time later, day or night he doesn’t know, crying in a language he can’t quite understand. He springs to his feet and grabs her hands, telling her quiet, I’m here, in Inuktitut over and over again. She stares at him, her eyes frightened and half glazed over. There’s a fever rising in her cheeks and blood gathering at the corners of her mouth. He’s going to have to stitch the cut. He lays a hand soft on her forehead, then rushes from the room to fetch his equipment. He should call Bridgens, but he does not even put this to mind as he rushes back to Silna. She looks at him in silent shock.

“Silna,” he says, struggling to form the right words, alternating between his sparse Inuktitut and Scots-tinged English. “I have to stitch your tongue. It’s going to hurt but you’ll make it through, I promise. Can you do it?”

She nods in sick confusion, and he props her head up and pushes back his sleeves. The stitches, although not ideal, must be preferable to cauterization, surely? He tries not to think of it.  
“Open,” he whispers, gently taking ahold of her jaw, and she opens her mouth, trusting him but not without her eyes welling with fear. He tilts her face into the light and finds the raw edge of what’s left of her tongue with ease. It’s cut cleanly, and will need but a few stitches to still the bleeding. He reaches to touch the cut, and Silna bites his finger reflexively, with more strength than he could have anticipated. He gasps in pain but immediately composes himself, for her sake.

“It’s alright, I’ll cause you no hurt,” he promises, easing her mouth back open. With aching fingers, he secures the first knot of thread in her flesh. She groans, pained and guttural, and he steadies his free hand on her neck as he plunges the stitch one, two, three times. He ties off and dabs at what blood has welled up, then rinses her mouth clean and tilts her chin forward. She has little energy to spit, and lets the bloodied water drip from her lips into his basin. He wipes her lips and lets himself finally take a full breath. She leans forward, exhausted, and presses her forehead into his shoulder. He wraps his arms tight around her and for the first time in a long time, begins to pray.

The days pass deliriously for them both. She shakes through a fever, then a cough. She does not speak, barely has energy for eating. He begs her to eat something, anything, and offers her food that is soft and warm. The panic rises again in him when he thinks of the lead in the tins, but better she eats something than nothing. Between her and his variously precarious patients, he does not sleep. Bridgens threatens to skin him if he doesn’t lay down, so he does, but he’s up in another few hours and running back to Silna to check her temperature. 

Throughout these days, he’s seen her in various stages of undress, as she sweats through her fever. He only removes her coat when she asks him to help, by tilting her head at him as she struggles with the hem. In her discomfort, she indicates she wants to undress further, and he helps her strip off her boots and loosen the neck of her inner parka. Once, at the height of her fever, she indicates she needs help removing her inner parka too. It takes Harry aback some that she has no further layer of clothing beneath, but he barely lets himself think on it. The beads of sweat on her chest concern him far more than the fact that it is bare to him.

Her fever breaks that night, and he offers a small thank you to whatever spirit may be listening as he wipes the sweat from her brow and notices that the worst of it is over. Clear-eyed for once, she offers him a sad smile. She has a wool blanket around her bare shoulders, and she looks both more fragile and more present than he’s ever seen her.

The worst of her illness past and her stitches healing, the two of them can turn their minds to smaller matters. Her hair is still braided the way it was the night she arrived, and it’s now sweat-slick and matted to her forehead. He takes one of her braids between his fingers. 

“Would you like me to brush your hair?” he asks, first in English, then again in an attempt at Inuktitut, running his fingers through his own hair as he speaks. She nods, and her eyes brighten almost imperceptibly. He squeezes her hands and stands to go find his good boar-bristle hairbrush. It’s been a long time since he gave himself the luxury of the good brush and his pomade, but for her he will always make time.

He lets her lean against his chest as he picks the sinew ties out of her braids and gently lays the hair against her shoulders. For each braid, he takes care to pick apart the knots and brush it smooth. Her hair, though tangled and dirty, is longer and softer than he could have anticipated. He feels his heart beat against his ribs and prays she can’t feel it.

He parts her hair down the middle, the way she likes, and separates the bundles of hair to each side. She hums happily and he notices, for a brief, hot moment, the contrast of her hair glowing in the lamplight against her bare shoulder.

He remembers how to braid- he wove a braided May crown once as a child, and at another time long ago, Jane had sat him down and tossed her hair in his face, demanding he do it for her. He’d struggled some, but was able to give her a half-decent braided bun with light tendrils out the side, in the romantic style. She’d been pleased, despite her afterwards choosing to cuff him upside the head.

Harry puts himself to work on Silna’s braids with methodical ease, singing to himself under his breath. He has just finished with the second braid and laid it gently over her shoulder when he becomes acutely aware of her hot, bare skin beneath his fingertips. He feels his breath hitch ever so slightly. She notices, surely, for she reaches up and lays her hand over his.  
With his arm draped over her shoulder, his hand is resting against the curve of her bare breast, soft in the heat of the room. She leans slightly against his chest, and he feels his heart still at her closeness and warmth. She is whole, and here, and-

“I love you,” he whispers, almost in reflex. She turns her head to regard him out of the corner of her eye. He’s not sure she’s taken his meaning until she shifts her body on the bed, rustling the blankets, to turn and face him. There’s the barest hint of a smile at the corners of her lips. She puts her hand against his neck and presses her forehead to his.

To Harry, there’s something sacred about the way she breathes him in, about the way her skin touches hers. To both of them, it all seems the most natural thing in the world. So, he bridges the gap, leaning into her and pressing his lips, butterfly soft, against the tender corner of her mouth.

She leans into him with a pleased hum and kisses him back, quiet and a little unsteady. Harry feels the blood in his head. She is warm and alive and bright in his arms, and he struck by the fact that he not only loves her by heart and by head but by body too.

Slowly, gently, they end up in each other’s arms, feeling their hearts beat as one. Harry falls asleep quickly, as has become his wont, and she runs her chapped fingers through his hair until she, too, is asleep.


End file.
